News

Into the Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown by Angela Thirlwell

The title of this book makes Ford Madox Brown sound racier than he actually was: two of his four loves were his wives and two were unconsummated crushes. Unlike other Pre-Raphaelite painters who traded their exhausted models and mistresses like stamps, Madox Brown valued imagination and independence in a woman above a good head of hair. In matters of love, Angela Thirlwell demonstrates, he was romantic, unconventional and repeatedly disappointed. He also showed remarkably good taste.

He was 19 when he married Elisabeth Bromley, in 1841. Elisabeth was also his cousin, and Thirlwell suggests that she took on the roles of his mother and sister as well (both had just died of consumption). It was, Thirlwell says, "a marriage of true partners and contemporaries". Elisabeth was pious and Madox Brown was not, but he leant on her, listened to her, and painted her, until she, too, died of consumption five